Grey’s Anatomy’s Camilla Luddington Shares How She Talks to Her Children About Her Antidepressant Medication (Exclusive)
Camilla Luddington is an open book when it comes to her mental health — especially with her young children.
In fact, the Grey’s Anatomy actress, 41, who shares her two children Hayden, 8, and Lucas, 4, with husband Matthew Alan, tells PEOPLE that it wasn’t until she became a mom that she faced her own mental health challenges head on.
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“It’s really forced me to get a handle on my own mental health because I think that when I became a mom, I had never really experienced anxiety before and my anxiety ramped up in a way that was just unfair to myself,” she explains. “Unfair to have myself live like that every day. And I think that what motherhood did is force me to be like, ‘No, it’s not just me anymore. I have a family. I really have to take care of myself. It’s really important. If I’m not going to do this for me, do it for them.’”
Luddington says she began her journey with therapy “really late in life” and was ultimately prescribed Zoloft to help manage her anxiety — despite her initial hesitation to taking medication.
“I remember getting to a point where I had heart palpitations every day, and I was like, ‘But I don’t need to take anything. It’s going to change me. I’m going to feel so different,’ ” she says. “And I was so resistant… I think that’s so silly now when I see how much it’s helped me and how much more grounded I feel in life.”
While an antidepressant might be hard for an 8 and 4-year-old to understand, Luddington is transparent with her children about her daily “brain vitamin.”
“I’m really trying to be open publicly about taking an SSRI because I feel like it’s still kind of something that people don’t like to talk about,” she says. “And I know that so many mental health issues come up in high school and middle school. So I just want to make it in my own family feel like if they ever need to talk about anything, not necessarily take anything, but just to know that mom gets it and that it’s not shameful in my family, be like, ‘Hey, I need this thing. It helps calm my brain down.’”
Luddington has previously opened up about how having an open dialogue with her kids about mental health is creating a different environment than the one she grew up with.
“I don’t think it’s because my parents were trying to keep it a secret, but mental health just wasn’t really talked about,” she told Wondermind in 2023, sharing elsewhere that it’s a “very British thing to not really seek therapy.” “I think it’s really important for [my kids] to know to not be ashamed of seeking help or taking medication.”
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